Peeking into the crystal ball: Future of Internet

6. Internet of Things (IoT)

 Zhou Hongyi, chairman of Qihoo 360 Technology Co Ltd

The Internet of Things is the best business opportunity in the next five years The Internet of Things (IoT) predicts the arrival of the real big data era. It is estimated that China has 1.5 to 2 billion phones today. In the future, there will be 30 to 50 billion devices shaping our life from quantitative changes to qualitative changes.

It is wrong to believe that the smartphone is the central hub of IoT, which does not rely on smartphones to remotely control other devices from cars to household appliances. Instead, the devices themselves, if they have an intelligent system, will be able to differentiate or substitute parts of the phone's function

 Liu Qiangdong, CEO of jd.com

All products can be connected with the Internet, including vehicles, clothes and mobile phones. For example, delivery staff could be replaced by smart cars in logistics centers in the near future.

 Zhang Yaqin, president of Baidu

In the past, our focus has been searching the right information for users anywhere. In the future, we want to interconnect the real world, connecting people to services.

 A venture capitalist who declined to be identified

Currently, domestic online food-ordering platforms are offering similar services in terms of partnered restaurants and delivery quality. Their differences are not big enough to lure customers away from competitors, so a powerful weapon is to launch a price war to vie for price-sensitive users.

So far, the strategy has worked... but winning market share purely through burning cash is not sustainable.